2,000 civilians feared slaughtered in a single night

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 May 2009, 02:55 GMT]Indiscriminate barrage of shelling by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) on the 'safety zone' starting from Saturday night to Sunday morning slaughtered more than 2,000 civilians including large number of women and children, medical sources in Vanni said quoting the injured who managed to reach the makeshift hospital. Dead bodies are scattered everywhere and 814 wounded managed to reach the makeshift hospital up to 9:25 a.m., doctors said. Every kind of lethal weapon such as the internationally banned cluster shells and shells fired from Multi Barrel Rocket Launchers and Cannons were used turning the so-called safety zone into a killing field. The SLA usually chooses weekends for its massacres to minimise international attention.

The entire family of a devoted nursing officer, Gracian Tharmarasa, has been wiped out in the shelling.

Dead bodies are found in bunkers and inside the tarpaulin tents.

The exact number of the killed and injured is yet to be ascertained.

257 dead bodies, including 67 that of children, have been brought to the hospital.

112 of the injured brought to the hospital were children.

The makeshift hospital which is now running in junior school in Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal is struggling beyond words to cope with the situation, the medical sources said.

"This is the first time in history where the International Community and the UN have politically experimented such a mass killing of civilians in a single day by giving an almost open consent to a government," described a human rights professional in Colombo upon hearing the news.

The large scale slaughter is believed to be a result of India prodding Colombo to finish the war before the change of government, political circles in Colombo said adding that it seems that the 'war on terror' has been translated into 'war on civilians' in the time of Obama Administration.